New book: The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention

How should the international community react when a government transgresses humanitarian norms and violates the human rights of its own nationals? And where does the responsibility lie to protect people from such acts of violation? In this new volume scholars from various disciplines investigate some of the most complex and controversial debates regarding the legitimacy of protecting humanitarian norms and universal human rights by non-violent and violent means. Charting the development of humanitarian intervention from its origins in the nineteenth century through to the present day, the book surveys the philosophical and legal rationales of enforcing humanitarian norms by military means, and how attitudes to military intervention on humanitarian grounds have changed over the course of three centuries. Drawing from a wide range of disciplines, the authors lend a fresh perspective to contemporary dilemmas using case studies from Europe, the United States, Africa and Asia.

Table of Contents

1. The emergence of humanitarian intervention: three centuries of ‘enforcing humanity’ Fabian Klose
Part I. Theoretical Approach and Legal Discourse on the Concept of Humanitarian Intervention:
2. Humanitarianism and human rights: a troubled rapport Michael Geyer
3. Humanitarian intervention and the issue of state sovereignty in the discourse of legal experts between the 1830s and the First World War Daniel Marc Segesser
4. The legal justification of international intervention: theories of community and admissibility Stefan Kroll
Part II. Fighting the Slave Trade and Protecting Religious Minorities: Major Impulses for Humanitarian Intervention in the Nineteenth Century:
5. Enforcing abolition: the entanglement of civil society action, humanitarian norm-setting, and military intervention Fabian Klose
6. Lord Vivian’s tears: the moral hazards of humanitarian intervention Mairi S. Macdonald
7. From protection to humanitarian intervention? Enforcing Jewish rights in Romania and Morocco around 1880 Abigail Green
Part III. Transferring a Concept to the Twentieth Century:
8. Prudence or outrage? Public opinion and humanitarian intervention in historical and comparative perspective Jon Western
9. Non-state actors’ humanitarian operations in the aftermath of the First World War: the case of the Near East relief Davide Rodogno
10. Humanitarian intervention as legitimation of violence – the German case 1937–9 Jost Dülffer
Part IV. Limited Options or Further Development? Humanitarian Intervention during the Cold War:
11. Cold War peacekeeping versus humanitarian intervention: beyond the Hammarskjoldian model Norrie Macqueen
12. From the protection of sovereignty to humanitarian intervention? Traditions and developments of United Nations peacekeeping in the twentieth century Jan Erik Schulte
Part V. A New Century of Humanitarian Intervention?:
13. A not so humanitarian intervention Bradley Simpson
14. The responsibility to protect: foundation, transformation, and application of an emerging norm Manuel Fröhlich
15. Humanitarian interventions, past and present Andrew Thompson